Technical advancement in computing and communication systems has revolutionized how individuals interact from remote locations. For instance, in business or academic environments, including, for example, management or financial industries, individuals interact through conferencing systems to facilitate meetings between persons or groups of persons situated in remote locations away from one another, thereby eliminating or substantially reducing the need for expensive and time consuming business or personal travel to the meetings.
In another instance, conferencing systems can enable conference participants to conduct synchronous collaboration sessions with other conference participants from remote locations through identical copies of windows generated by conference system software applications shared by all the conference participants. In addition, a number of conferencing systems exist and have been refined to a point that they are now practical working tools for use in at least some kinds of conferencing activities. One form of a conferencing system is a speakerphone. For example, using a speakerphone, conference participants situated at remote locations can converse with other conference participants at various locations. Another form of a conferencing system is a video conference.
Video conferencing systems are adapted to broadcast a video representation from one conferencing location to other conferencing locations. Hence, conference participants present at remote locations during a video conference can be able to visually see a conference participant that is presenting from another location. Yet another form of a conferencing system is a computer based conferencing system. In particular, computer based conferencing systems are adapted to use computing systems as conferencing devices. For example, a computer based conferencing system can be equipped with a microphone, and will often have a camera as well. Further, audio and video signals of a computer based conferencing system are digitized, and can be transmitted to conference participants through a system network, such as, the Internet, to other conference participants participating in the conference.
One form of a computer based conferencing system is a web conference, such as, for example, IBM® Lotus® Sametime® (IBM, Lotus, and Sametime are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both) and IBM® LotusLive® (IBM and LotusLive are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both). In particular, web conferencing is a network broadcast service that can be made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. The service allows real-time point to point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. In addition, web conferencing can operate to provide information of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously across geographically dispersed locations. For instance, web conferencing allows users to carry on business meetings and seminars, make presentations, conduct demonstrations, provide online education and offer direct customer support.
In addition, control of a web conference session hosted by computer based conferencing systems can be shared among conference participants. As a consequence, computer based conferencing systems can increase opportunities for group work among business or network conference participants and also provide ready access to resources needed for such work, e.g., shared data or control of conference sessions or presentations between one or more participants of the conference. Further, some web conferencing systems can include notification features to conference participants, such as, for example, texting, VoIP (voice over IP) and full-motion video.